Hotel chain 'can't find UK staff' as foreign workers take most jobs

Hotel chain Malmaison and Hotel du Vin has joined the growing list of
employers warning that UK job applicants are unemployable because they lack
basic skills, with most of its jobs taken up by foreign workers.

Serving up jobs? Hotel chain Malmaison says it advertises lots of jobs for chefs and other roles but struggles to fill them with UK applicants.Photo: Alamy

Just 40pc of the group’s 2,300 jobs in the UK are held by British nationals, according to the company’s people director, Mike Williams. The rest are largely given to Eastern Europeans from Latvia, Slovakia and Poland, he says.

The admission is set to inflame tension over immigration , which this week intensified when official figures showed employers circumnavigating the annual immigration cap by transferring thousands of non-EU workers from their overseas offices to Britain.

The foreign workers at Malmaison and Hotel du Vin are mainly from within Europe and so – quite rightly – are free to work in the UK and are not counted as “migrant workers” for the purposes of the Government’s annual immigration cap.

But the fact so many take up jobs at the hotel chain reflects a growing concern from employers, highlighted by the CBI and British Chambers of Commerce in recent weeks, that British people are just not interested in the roles going, nor are they capable.

Mr Williams insists it is not about pay. A lot of the jobs may start off on minimum wage, but it is widely expected in the hotel industry that people start from the bottom and work their way up, he says.

Hotel general managers can earn between £70,000 and £100,000, but most of them have done their time on the shop floor, he says. Four of the company’s general managers are under 30, and 75pc are under 35.

There are also a variety of jobs that pay well above the minimum wage, including chefs, sales managers and spa therapists. Those looking to climb the career ladder and “get rich quick” could do so, if they put the elbow grease in, Mr Williams said

But he added: “Often UK applicants don’t want to take up the challenge because it’s hard work and unsociable hours and that tends to put people off.

“A lot of people don’t want to join at entry level and work their way up.”

Williams was speaking at a seminar earlier this week run by the Westminster Employment Forum, an events company, on how to tackle UK youth unemployment, which is at more than 20pc.

Despite the hotel chain having 108 vacancies, it is “struggling” to fill them. “The trends we’ve noticed from applicants, especially from the UK, is that people don’t see our industry as a career choice. Typically it’s seen more as a stop gap between studies or employment.”

He warned that British teenagers were too influenced by the “celebrity culture”, chasing after an unrealistic dream of being a pop singer rather than putting the hard graft in for jobs.

“Comments like, 'I’m going to be a rock musician’ or 'I’m going to have a singing career’ is what we see quite a bit when people don’t want to come on board with us,” he said.

Neil Carmichael, MP for Stroud and a member of the education select committee, said the number of UK nationals taking up jobs at the hotel group was “amazingly low” and raised serious questions about whether the education system was fit for purpose. “It’s not just a question of encouraging students to think where their interests are, it’s also a question of pointing them in a direction of where they are going to get the jobs,” he said.

Sandwich chain Pret A Manger came under fire last year for hiring too many foreign workers when British unemployment was increasing – but the company said not enough suitable British applicants applied.

Mr Williams said careers advisers should do more to help youngsters sell themselves at interview. “It sounds obvious, but we’ve seen some real shockers,” he said.